<p>From factory workers in Welland to retail workers in St. Catharines,<br>from hospitality workers in Niagara Falls to migrant farm workers in<br>Niagara-On-The-Lake, <em>Union Power</em> showcases the role of working<br>people in the Niagara region. Charting the development of the<br>region's labour movement from the early nineteenth century to the<br>present, Patrias and Savage illustrate how workers from this highly<br>diversified economy struggled to improve their lives both inside and<br>outside the workplace. Including extensive quotations from interviews,<br>archival sources, and local newspapers, the story unfolds, in part,<br>through the voices of the people themselves: the workers who fought for<br>unions, the community members who supported them, and the employers who<br>opposed them.</p><br><br><p>Early industrial development and the appalling working conditions of<br>the often vulnerable common labourer prompted a movement toward worker<br>protection. Patrias and Savage argue that union power - power not<br>built on profit, status, or prestige - relies on the twin<br>concepts of struggle and solidarity: the solidarity of the shared<br>interests of the working class and the struggle to achieve common<br>goals. <em>Union Power</em> traces the evidence of these twin concepts<br>through the history of the Niagara region's labour movement.</p><br><p><br><b>Carmela Patrias</b> is a professor in the Department of<br>History at Brock University. Her publications include: <em>Patriots and<br>Proletarians: Politicizing Hungarian Immigrants in Canada</em>,<br><em>Discounted Labour: Women Workers in Canada, 1870-1939</em>,<br>co-authored with Ruth Frager, and <em>Jobs and Justice: Fighting<br>Discrimination in Wartime Canada, 1939-1945</em>. <b>Larry<br>Savage</b> is associate professor of labour studies and political<br>science and director of the Jobs and Justice Research Unit at Brock<br>University.